


Last Call at the Homesick Pub

by Chryse



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hiatus, M/M, Pining, Post-TRF/Pre-TEH, St. Patrick's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 07:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6274954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/pseuds/Chryse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You may have heard of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson."<br/>--Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Empty House"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Call at the Homesick Pub

 

Aislin first heard the fiddler as she was walking back to her flat, down a narrow street in the old part of the city.  At first the tune did not register, but then she drew closer and saw the tall figure silhouetted against the streetlight, heard the bright liveliness of the music, and thought _wait a minute._

She stopped and watched as the fiddler finished the piece. He hadn’t exactly drawn a crowd, and there was not a lot of money in the open violin case at his feet. Aislin was normally rather a shy person when she wasn’t onstage, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up, so when he drew the bow across the strings in a final flourish she clapped and tossed a handful of coins into the case. He nodded at her, a quick indifferent thanks, and lifted his bow again, but before he could start Aislin asked, “Are you Irish then?”

He paused. “No.”

“But that’s an Irish song you’re playing.”

He shrugged. “A lot of expatriates in this neighborhood.” He definitely wasn’t Irish, though his English was good, but she couldn’t place his accent.

“Where _are_ you from?”

“Norway,” the man said shortly. He clearly wanted her to clear off so he could get back to playing. He actually glanced past her shoulder, as though a crowd might be gathering impatiently to hear him play.

“Can you play any others?”

The man glanced back. “Do you have a request?”

“’Wind that shakes the barley’.”

He frowned a little as though unfamiliar with the words. “How does it go?”

She hummed the first few bars, and he nodded and swung into the song. Aislin felt a melancholy pang of nostalgia. The band hadn’t really played this one much, even when they had a fiddler, and it made her think of ceilidhs back home. “All right, stop,” she said. “Listen, I’ve got a band, Irish music. We play at a pub not far from here. It’s an English pub—more or less—but the beer’s good and they’ve got whisky. We’re booked solid the next two weeks going up to St. Patrick’s Day and our fiddler’s buggered off to America with a girl, so…are you interested?”

The man blinked at her. “You want me to play in your band.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll not get famous—we’re a bar band, it’s not U2, but we have fun. Free drinks and a share in the take.” And a different girl every night if he wanted, though she didn’t mention that—that was how they’d lost Niall.

“Why do you do this?”

“What?”

“The band. Why? You don’t support yourself that way, you—“ he seemed to catch himself. “You’re not trying to make it big, why do you play?”

This seemed an odd question coming from a man fiddling for spare change on the street, but not unreasonable, Aislin supposed. “I told you, it’s fun. Making music together. And it connects us to home…well, some of us.”

He lowered his bow and violin for the first time, glancing in both directions up and down the street again. He frowned at something behind her and then nodded. “Yes. All right. I will join your band. Give me a list of your songs.”

“Can you be ready to play them by Thursday?”

“I can play anything,” he said confidently, and Aislin believed him. She’d met his type before: Suzuki trained as a kid, maybe, or just blessed with a good ear; musicians who could hear any song once and play it perfectly.

“Good then,” she said. “Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee and write down the list.”

 

Under the bright lights of the café the fiddler—his name was Sigerson, he told her—looked older than she’d thought on the dark street, at least in his mid-thirties.  He had reddish hair and very pale sharp eyes. He was also disinclined to small talk. This was fine with Aislin, who wanted to get home, so she wrote out a list of songs on the back of a piece of paper from her bag. “Do you know these?”

Sigerson shrugged. “I can look on You Tube.”

“If you’re going to do that look at Fiddler’s Green, or Flogging Molly—we aren’t the bloody Dubliners.”

Sigerson blinked at her and she could have sworn he hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. “All right.”

“Good then. We haven’t a rehearsal space but the pub won’t be crowded of a Thursday, so we’ll be all right. You can play a solo on these if you like; I’ll mark them. Nine o’clock but come a bit early so you can have a drink and meet the others. I’ll see you there?”

“Won’t the others mind I’m not Irish?”

Aislin laughed. “It’s only me and the bass player’s proper Irish. We’ve got a Scotsman on the uilleann pipes—he grew up playing bagpipes, switched over to play with us. Does the pennywhistle too. You’ll be fine.” She held out her hand, and he shook it gingerly. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

 

Aislin half expected him not to show, but there he was: right on time and looking better than she remembered in his shabby t-shirt and jeans. “So have you got a first name?” Jimmy asked.

Sigerson hesitated so long Aislin wondered how long it had been since anyone asked him. “Skjalde.”

“Christ!” Jimmy said, laughing. “I’ll stick to Sigerson.”

“None of that,” Graeme said, smiling. “Your name sounds just as odd to him.” Graeme’s warm Scottish burr was always taken for Irish by the locals, to which he responded with easy good humor.  “Have you been here long?”

“Not long.”

Aislin saw Jimmy’s raised eyebrows behind Sigerson’s stiff back but she couldn’t be arsed to care. She’d pulled the bloke off the street; what did they expect? He could be as stiff as he liked as long as he could play.

And play he could. The beginning was a little rocky, but Sigerson was a quick study and kept his eyes pinned to Aislin the whole time, following her cues; by the end of an hour they sounded as though they’d always played together. He never did loosen up though. At the end of the night when they gathered at the bar he took his share with a terse “Thank you,” declined the offer of a drink, and left.

“Fun bloke,” Jimmy said.

“Oh, he’s fine. I think he’s cute,” Katie said, just to rile him, and Jimmy scowled. Jimmy would never have a hope with Katie and he knew it. “You said you found him busking? Do you think he’s homeless? Maybe he’s mentally ill, poor thing.”

“I think he’s just not used to playing with a band,” Graeme said. Graeme usually didn’t stay after their set either—he was the oldest of them, too old to stay out at the pub anymore, he said—but even he couldn’t resist the urge to gossip about their new bandmate. “I’ll wager he’s classically trained. More accustomed to playing in an orchestra.”

Aislin was already nodding. “I think you’re right. At least we needn’t worry about him running off with a girl,” and they all groaned, and then raised their glasses to the absent Niall and what they were all convinced was his doomed romance.

 

“You need to slow down a bit on the last few songs,” Aislin told Sigerson. “You’re going too fast, the audience wants to sing along.”

“We should be discouraging that,” Sigerson said sternly. “They are not good singers.”

“Yeah, I know, but that’s not the point, is it? They’re not here for a concert, they’re here because they’re homesick. They want to drink whisky and speak English and sing along with songs they know. That’s what we give them.”

Sigerson frowned, considering this. “Yes, all right then.”

Aislin noticed his speech had picked up a little of her cadence, losing some of its Scandinavian rhythm, and it made her smile. “We’ll be the hottest ticket in the city come St. Paddy’s day.”

He tilted his head. “Do we have competition?”

Aislin laughed outright. “Not a bit.”

 

Sigerson began to relax more, his playing blending more harmoniously with the others and his solos becoming lightning-quick and almost joyful. He might even be enjoying himself, Aisling thought, watching as she gulped water during his “Rocky Road to Dublin” solo. That song was a bastard; thank God they had a fiddler again to give her a break. Then something caught her eye: Graeme on the pipes, watching Sigerson just as she was watching Sigerson.

Hmm. Aislin adored Graeme, who was a professor at the same university where she was doing a post-doc in medieval history. When they’d first started playing there’d been a boyfriend, a quiet man who’d come on the weekends, but he’d been gone for months; Aislin didn’t know the story there.  Graeme was a catch by any standard: kind, courtly, handsome for a man nearing forty. And Sigerson _was_ cute, if a bit weird. Aislin hadn’t seen any signs that Sigerson was interested in much of anybody at all, but maybe he was just shy. He certainly wasn’t her type—Aislin tended toward endearingly geeky poet types with dreamy eyes and long hair.

“I think Graeme’s got a crush,” Katie said one night while Jimmy was at the bar chatting up an English girl. Sigerson and Graeme had already left, as usual.

“I think so too. Has he got a chance, do you think?”

Katie wrinkled her nose in thought, swirling her drink. Aislin liked Katie, who was in the city for two years doing marketing for a big American corporation, though they really hadn’t much in common.  Aislin sometimes pictured the two of them meeting up again in twenty years: Katie CEO by then, still perfectly blonde, polished and dressed to the nines; Aislin still wearing her hair in the same messy tangle, a disheveled academic. Katie was nakedly ambitious. She’d once told Aislin she’d learned mandolin to distinguish herself from the other Harvard hopefuls, who by her account all played the flute.

“I don’t see why not,” she said finally. “Sigerson’s _smart_. You can tell when he talks. I don’t know how he ended up practically homeless here of all places—“

“Oh, he’s never homeless, is he? Has he said?”

“No, he’s always clean, but he’s only got those three shirts! And his clothes are so cheap.”

“His violin, though.” Aislin could tell that the quality of Sigerson’s instrument was far better than Niall’s had been.

“Right, exactly. I think he wasn’t always like this. Who knows? Maybe Graeme can help him.”

 

“Saw Sigerson at a café today,” Jimmy said to Aislin, tuning up. “He was with a girl.”

“Really?” Aislin said, taken aback.

“Yeah. He didn’t see me. Not a date--she was fancy-like, like Katie. Maybe a social worker? She gave him some papers? I don’t think Graeme’s got cause to worry.”

“Shut up, he’ll hear you,” Aislin said, thinking that if even Jimmy had noticed, Sigerson _must_ have caught on to Graeme’s interest by now. “Stop your gossip and get ready to play.”

 

St. Patrick’s Day was a Saturday, a boon to expatriate pubs and the bands that played them. Aislin told everyone to get there half an hour early to make sure the sound system was up to snuff, but with ten minutes to go Sigerson had still not arrived.

“Do you think something’s happened to him?” Graeme asked, looking worried. “Have you got a number for him or—“

“Ah, there, he is,” Jimmy said in relief. “Christ, what’s he gone and done?”

Sigerson was dashing through the back door, lugging a knapsack along with his violin case.  “Sorry,” he said, out of breath, dropping the knapsack. There was a purpling bruise on one cheek with a long bleeding scrape near his eye. “I’ll just—oh.” He stood up abruptly from where he had started to open the case, staring at his hands in apparent surprise. “I must wash my hands. I was too fast before.”

Aislin followed his gaze and saw dried blood under his nails. She caught his wrists before he could turn away, giving them a little jerk so that he looked up to meet her eyes. His hands were trembling.  “What’s happened? Do you need to go to hospital?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said, looking surprised at her concern. “I am sorry to be late. I will wash my hands.” When she looked unconvinced, he actually smiled at her: “It’s all right. You should see the other guy.”

Aislin laughed and let him go and then Jimmy came back with a bag of ice wrapped in a towel and said, “Ice,” and Sigerson took it gratefully and sprinted to the loo.

“I’m going to get him a drink,” Graeme said, already moving toward the bar.

“He’ll never drink it,” Aislin called after him, but she was wrong.  Sigerson came back a moment later with his hands and face scrubbed clean and his damp hair slicked back and downed the shot of whiskey in one go.  “Thank you,” he said, “one minute,”  kneeling to open the violin case. Aislin, looking down, saw that the roots of his hair were dark and blinked in surprise: Sigerson colored his hair? But then he stood up, tuning the violin as he did, and she thought it had just been a trick of the light on his wet hair.

“Ready?” Aislin asked, pulling her guitar strap over her shoulder.

“Ready,” Sigerson said, and then his eyes crinkled in that unexpectedly wicked smile again and he said, “Let’s go put on a show.”

“Oh _hell_ yeah,” Katie said, grinning back, and Jimmy whooped and Graeme slapped his shoulder and then they were tumbling out on to the stage, Katie and Jimmy already swinging into the opening of  “Whiskey in the Jar” as Aislin grabbed the microphone and shouted, “ _Lá fhéile Pádraig_ _sona dhaoibh!”_

The crowd, already packed solid and well into the Guinness, roared back, and they were off. The band had never played so well, Aislin thought, happy and half drunk on sheer exuberance alone, as their audience bellowed its enthusiasm for every new song. They took a break after an hour to gulp water thirstily and have a round of whisky—even Sigerson—and then moved into the real crowd-pleasers, “Rocky Road to Dublin” and “The Frost is all Over” and the jigs, the overcrowded pub fairly vibrating with people trying to dance in the crammed space. They’d planned for several instrumental pieces this round and Sigerson and Graeme were brilliant, playing so hard Sigerson broke a string and had to dash offstage to replace it. Aislin saw Graeme watching Sigerson with that quiet smile, as though he were the brightest star in the sky, and for the first time she saw Sigerson smiling back.

Aislin was soaked with sweat when she glanced at her watch and signaled for another break, knowing there was only an hour to closing—they’d need to start winding it down soon.

“To St. Patrick,” Graeme said generously at the bar, raising his glass. “And to Ireland!”

“To Ireland and to Wexford!” Jimmy shouted.

“To Dublin,” Aislin said, raising her own glass.

“To Boston!” Katie said. “And to…wherever in Ireland my family came from, I guess.”

“To Melrose,” Graeme said, smiling.

They all looked at Sigerson, who raised his glass and said simply, “To home.”

“To home,” they chorused, and drank. Aislin felt suddenly immensely fond of all of them, this little temporary family thrown together in a strange city, making this incredible music on this one magic night. She put her arms around Katie and Jimmy and then they were all in a sort of awkward and crowded group hug, even Sigerson dragged in rather stiffly by Graeme.

They drank another round and went back out, settling into the slower songs now. Aislin would have liked to finish with “Molly Malone”, the true sound of home for her, but that was everyone’s song tonight—even the non-English speakers were soon warbling “Cockles and mussels, alive alive-oh” with the rest of the crowd. They had to sing “Danny Boy” three times, until finally Aislin signaled for everyone else to fall silent and let Graeme play it through one last time on the pipes, and then it was all over.

“Aislin.”

Aislin turned from putting her guitar up, pulling her sweaty hair off her neck—thank God it was Sunday tomorrow, she felt as though she were fair _sweating_ whisky.

“I have to leave,” Sigerson said. He had his violin case and hefted his knapsack a little awkwardly onto his shoulder. “I should have gone tonight, but…I promised you to stay to St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Ah no,” Aislin said in dismay. “Is it what happened earlier? Are the police going to be after you?”

“I doubt it, but you needn’t worry if they come round,” Sigerson said. She thought she heard it again, the ghost of her own accent on his tongue. “You’ll have nothing to tell them but that I’m gone.”

She looked him sadly. “You’d best go then. But I’ll miss you. We all will.”

“I hope you find a new fiddler,” he said, settling his knapsack and turning toward the door. “But if you don’t…you’re a good singer, Aislin O’Connor, but you’re a brilliant historian.”

“Thanks,” she said automatically and then blinked. How the hell could he know that?  But before she could chase after him the American bartender shouted “Ashley!”, mangling her name as he always did, and she sighed and turned back to argue with him.

 

Aislin stepped out the back door into the quiet of the dark alleyway and then stopped abruptly, backing up a step so that she was hidden by the doorway. She’d seen the instrument cases first, violin and pipes, and then the two figures crushed against the wall, long white fingers clenched on a dark coat.

“Come home with me,” Graeme murmured.

His voice had been gentle, but Sigerson’s sounded broken. “I can’t. I have to go.”

“Just for tonight. I know I can’t keep you.”

“I wish…if I could, I would. I would with you. But I can’t.”

A moment of quiet. “There’s someone back home, isn’t there.”

Sigerson’s voice had regained its usual stiffness, but there was a brittle edge to it. “Not like that. He doesn’t care for me, not as you would. But I can’t.”

“I don’t want to make this worse for you,” Graeme said, still gentle, and Aislin wanted to kick him. _Fight for him, you idiot, he needs somebody to care for him, can’t you see that,_ she wanted to shout down the echoing alley. But she didn’t. Instead she heard Graeme step back, and then Sigerson’s long stride moving slowly off. She held herself still against the wall, barely breathing, and then at last Graeme walked away too.

Aislin let out her breath on a long whisky-heavy sigh. “ _Go n-eírí an bóthar leat,”_ she said to the empty night air, to no one, to everyone far from home this night, and then she too walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> [ "Rocky Road to Dublin" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3eq85QFJJg) as played live by Fiddler's Green. This video just kills me! Why is there a sheep? Can the fiddler and the accordion player just get a room already in their solo? Why does everyone stop to drag a case out so the audience can dance around the one guy? How did a German band decide they wanted to play Irish music? I love them.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Busker Sherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593786) by [bluebellofbakerstreet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellofbakerstreet/pseuds/bluebellofbakerstreet)




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